Highlights
- •Regular exercise should be an integral part of every weight management program.
- •Endurance, resistance, and high-intensity interval exercises are effective options.
- •Regular exercise contributes to weight maintenance after weight loss.
- •Exercise can improve the health consequences of obesity, even without weight loss.
Abstract
Obesity is a multifactorial disease with increasing incidence and burden on societies
worldwide. Obesity can be managed through everyday behavioral changes involving energy
intake and energy expenditure. Concerning the latter, there is strong evidence that
regular exercise contributes to body weight and fat loss, maintenance of body weight
and fat reduction, and metabolic fitness in obesity. Appropriate exercise programs
should ideally combine large negative energy balance, long-term adherence, and beneficial
effects on health and well-being. Endurance training appears to be the most effective
in this respect, although resistance training and high-intensity interval training
play distinct roles in the effectiveness of exercise interventions. With weight regain
being so common, weight loss maintenance is probably the greatest challenge in the
successful treatment of obesity. There is an established association between higher
levels of physical activity and greater weight loss maintenance, based on the abundance
of evidence from prospective observational studies and retrospective analyses. However,
proving a causative relationship between exercise and weight loss maintenance is difficult
at present. Exercise has the potential to alleviate the health consequences of obesity,
even in the absence of weight loss. All in all, exercise constitutes an indispensable,
yet often underestimated, tool in the management of obesity.
Abbreviations:
ACSM (American College of Sports Medicine), CRF (cardiorespiratory fitness), CVD (cardiovascular disease), ΗΙΙΤ (high-intensity interval training), MET (metabolic equivalent of task), MICT (moderate-intensity continuous training), NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease), RCT (randomized controlled trial)Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: October 29, 2018
Accepted:
October 22,
2018
Received in revised form:
October 10,
2018
Received:
August 29,
2018
Identification
Copyright
© 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
